Senator Carl Levin, on the heels of last week's smackdown of Majority Leader Bill Frist, releases a declassified report on the use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War to the New York Times.

A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Okay. That's the New York Times.

If you're wondering about al-Libi's incentive to lie, you've got to go to the latest Newsweek:

With al-Libi, too, the initial approach was to read him his rights like any arrestee, one former member of the FBI team told NEWSWEEK. "He was basically cooperating with us." But this was post-9/11; President Bush had declared war on Al Qaeda, and in a series of covert directives, he had authorized the CIA to set up secret interrogation facilities and to use new, harsher methods. The CIA, says the FBI source, was "fighting with us tooth and nail."

[snip]

Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi's interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency's hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight." (A CIA official said he had no comment.)

So he was tortured.

He fabricated the link between Iraq and al Qaeda so they would stop torturing him.

This from a White House ruled with an iron first by a Vice President who just last week appealed to the Senate to reverse the ban on prisoner abuse. Thankfully, they didn't:

The White House has threatened to veto the bill if it includes the measure, saying the provision would restrict the president's ability to protect the country.

[snip]

Mr. McCain took to the Senate floor on Friday to criticize opponents of his provision, including the House Republican leadership, which is delaying work on the spending bill in what Democrats say is an effort to spare Vice President Dick Cheney an embarrassing setback.

Mr. Cheney lobbied Mr. McCain unsuccessfully to exempt the Central Intelligence Agency from the provisions. House Republicans have told the White House the measure will probably pass.

I'm going to be sick.

Labels: in the news